But Of Course YouTube Will Say It Wants To Share Revenue

from the but-let's-wait-for-the-details dept

Last month, there was some pointless wondering whether or not YouTube was somehow exploiting its users like sharecroppers by using their content for free, which they were then able to turn into $1.65 billion in funny money from Google. Of course, this whole "exploitation" argument didn't make much sense. After all, the reason YouTube was so successful wasn't that it was exploiting people, but that it gave video uploaders what they wanted. In other words, while they might not have received monetary compensation for their videos, they got (1) free hosting (video hosting can be expensive!) (2) a system that makes it easier for others to see their videos and (3) a big audience. It seems like a fair trade (if anything, YouTube may have ended up with the short-end of the stick on bandwidth costs). After all, if users were really feeling exploited, there were a ton of other video sharing sites out there, including Revver, who claimed it would give money to popular videos. Instead, though, Revver is apparently hovering around the deadpool while YouTube keeps growing. However, an even more important point is that, should there ever really be demand for monetary compensation, it wouldn't be that difficult for YouTube to add it. In fact, many are buzzing over comments late last week suggesting that YouTube was planning just such a system. It's not clear why this is exciting. It seems like a pretty obvious offering for YouTube to play around with (especially considering all the ridiculous "sharecropping" talk), but until the details are known, it's nothing more than idle talk from a company that's probably just helping to speed up the death of a few of its competitors.

Reader Comments

to be honest

instead youtube should try to keep the ad count low, as to just include their costs and a lil profit....

too many ads is going to be a disaster

if they offer premium content like "24" "lost" then they can include as many ads as the television....... but for the raw talent.... just give them fame and a place to get discovered..... these ppl are not here to make 300$ a month........ they are here to be discovered by some hot shot movie producer or get a music contract or something

I think its a good thing...there is no better way to motivate people than with money. So maybe youtube will become an online store for people content...only instead of the viewers paying with our money, we just sit through a 3 second pre roll ad or something similar.

Everyone talks about how user generated content will put pressure on the networks. I believe the ability to track and provide micropayments to the micro content producers is the first step for this to become reality.

As for the "will make more ads, will have more crappy video" argument.....when was the last time you went to Youtube? They have a lot of crappy videos and tonnes of ads already!

well.......... if you think it is going to be a 3 second "video" ad then my frined thnk again......
"with revenue sharing" i dont think it will be anything less than a minute of ads per 10 minute video

I don't know exactly how youtube stores videos, but I'm sure that what we see is a compressed version of what is uploaded. One option would be for youtube to enable purchasing of uncompressed videos and share a % of each purchase with the uploader. This allows enables more revenue for youtube, and gives popular uploaders the oportunity to make a little money. Also could be another way to rank videos. You know it isn't artificially high ranked if 100,000 people paid $2 to downoad the video.

Of course there are all kinds of legal perspectives on this, and I can only imagine the amount of storage that could take if people start uploading high-def video.

And i doubt teenage underwear dancer girls would get rich because while lots of guys like to watch it, if you are going to pay, you can do better at many xxx sites. (though police might be interested in seeing who really likes downloading lots of young scantialy clad girls dancing)

You're not going to see more ads, goofballs. It's based on a view system. You don't have to put ads in your video, you don't have to say anything to promote an advertiser. The deal is if your video gets popular, you get a small cut from getting the people to the website. Simple as that. No new ads, no in-video ads, it's just a system that is going to be slipped right behind everything they have built already.

Improvements to YT business model.

YT and the rest have one major flaw in thier business model, and that is that they a based int he USA. THey should set themselves up in some TPLAC(1)/bannana republic where the govt is more concerned with making a reasonable tax revenue off you than keeping the USA happy. HTere thay can ignoe the fact that thier servers are full of underwear dancers, piracy and the like, and the oweners can retire to theire home country with a huge fortune and a clean record. The country might even let you off paying taxes if you upgrade thier major backbone connection.